The Best Picture winner on Sunday will decide the fate of the Oscars. After years of tinkering with their utopian diorama, adding members to change their demographics, a diversity mandate implemented in 2024, a canceled Golden Globes where they brought in 300 new members to be more diverse, ongoing accusastions against films and people for being “racist,” as mass hysteria enveloped the industry ten years ago, they now have a chance to show the public that it was all done to make real change with a win for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners.
Or not.
The BAFTA, who lost their minds and brought in a select committee to choose the “correct” nominees finally “went back to normal” and followed the herd with One Battle After Another. Why won’t the Oscars do the same? Probably, they will. I’m gonna bet on a one in a million shot that, if it doesn’t pay off, many film fans will get a hard lesson how the Oscars actually work.
These voters, this hive mind, is, to quote Laurie Anderson, a “perfect little world that doesn’t really need you.” That’s never been more true than it is this year as the entire industry lays their flowers at the feet of the very overdue Paul Thomas Anderson. A nice guy, deserving of accolades – just not for this movie. Sorry but it’s true. But it doesn’t even matter what I think. Best Picture of the Year should have broader meaning than just a reflecting pool for people who get to see movies for free. It should matter to those who buy the tickets and show up at the movie theater, as they did for Sinners.
If more people read this site, which I guess they don’t anymore, it’s No Country for Old Oscar Bloggers, they would be well aware of the Category Five Shitstorm to come when Sinners doesn’t win. People are just now starting to wake up to that reality but it is too little, too late. These columns had to come with ballots in hand, not now when there is no way to turn the ship around.
@theextracreditspodcast If Sinners loses at the Oscars…then what? #sinners #fyp #oscars #oscarspostcontest #filmtok ♬ original sound – The Extra Credits Podcast
We can do the stat, where no black director has won in 98 years of Oscar history. We can do the stat where the only films by black directors to win Best Picture – Moonlight and 12 years a Slave – did not win Best Director. We can do the stat where the films by black screenwriters were relegated to the screenplay win – Precious, BlackKklansman, Get Out, American Fiction. We can do all of that but we don’t even have to. We can see that this year would be a travesty if the guy who directed Sinners does not win and according to nearly everyone on Gold Derby, he won’t.
We can abandon it all, the virtue signaling, the mandates, all of it. The high-minded hive mind can stop calling the other half of the country racist. They can just make good movies again and tell good stories because if they can’t pull the trigger for the film with 16 nominations, that made more money and had better reviews than One Battle After Another, I don’t know where that leaves us. At a big fat dead end, that’s where. What was it all for anyway, these last ten years?
If Sinners can’t win when Ryan Coogler hits the bullseye what is any of it for? What does any of it matter? Who are the Oscars for? Who are movies for? Critics? Pundits? Are they just a reflecting pool to tell the industry who is the fairest of them all? Is that really where we are in 2026, at Oscar’s 98th year? It’s won’t do.
This year was, to me, a nightmare because it was watching in real time the critics and bloggers decide the race. It wasn’t really about the industry deciding. They just followed the mass formation. Everything seemed to click into place with the mostly millennial critics feeling seen with One Battle. It is what it is.
Getting many of these old timers to vibe a vampire movie is a heavy lift. These are not people who ever get it where horror is concerned. Can the newbie members get with it? I don’t know. Probably not.
The stat I unearthed yesterday, that the lone director doesn’t win with screenplay convinced me that it probably won’t split. Either One Battle and PTA win or Sinners takes it, with Ryan Coogler and history is made. This TikTok user expresses why things will be bad if Sinners, with 16 nominations the most of all time, doesn’t win.
Who is predicting Ryan Coogler? Not many. I am. So is Variety’s Clayton Davis. And my friend Michael Grei. That’s pretty much it. Then again, only one person in 2019 predicted both Parasite and Bong Joon-Ho to win and that was Scott Mantz. This year, he’s predicting One Battle After Another.
Sunday can’t come soon enough.
Here are my predictions for the final night, take them with a grain of salt. I’ll be posting the Big Fat Predictions Chart later today.
Best Picture
1. Sinners
2. One Battle after Another
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. Frankenstein
6. Bugonia
7. F1
8. The Secret Agent
9. Sentimental Value
10. Train Dreams
Best Director
1. Sinners, Ryan Coogler
2. One Battle after Another, Paul Thomas Anderson
3. Hamnet, Chloé Zhao
4. Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie
5. Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier
Best Actor
1. Michael B. Jordan in Sinners
2. Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme
3. Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle after Another
4. Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent
5. Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon
Best Actress
1. Jessie Buckley in Hamnet
2. Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
3. Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue
4. Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value
5. Emma Stone in Bugonia
Best Supporting Actor
1. Delroy Lindo in Sinners
2. Sean Penn in One Battle after Another
3. Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value
4. Benicio Del Toro in One Battle after Another
5. Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein
Best Supporting Actress
1. Amy Madigan in Weapons
2. Teyana Taylor in One Battle after Another
3. Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners
4. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value
5. Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value
Best Adapted Screenplay
1. One Battle after Another
2. Hamnet
3. Train Dreams
4. Bugonia
5. Frankenstein
Best Original Screenplay
1. Sinners
2. Marty Supreme
3. Sentimental Value
4. It Was Just an Accident
5. Blue Moon
Best Editing
1. One Battle after Another
2. F1
3. Sinners
4. Marty Supreme
5. Sentimental Value
Best International Feature
1. Sentimental Value
2. The Secret Agent
3. It Was Just an Accident
4. Sirāt
5. The Voice of Hind Rajab
Animated Feature
1. KPop Demon Hunters
2. Arco
3. Elio
4. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
5. Zootopia 2
Best Animated Short Film
1. Forevergreen
2. Retirement Plan
3. Butterfly
4. The Girl Who Cried Pearls
5. The Three Sisters
Best Casting
1. Sinners
2. One Battle after Another
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. The Secret Agent
Best Cinematography
1. One Battle after Another
2. Sinners
2. Frankenstein
3. Marty Supreme
5. Train Dreams
Best Costume Design
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. Avatar: Fire and Ash
Best Documentary Feature
1. The Alabama Solution
2. The Perfect Neighbor
3. Come See Me in the Good Light
4. Cutting through Rocks
5. Mr. Nobody against Putin
Best Documentary Short
1. All the Empty Rooms
2. Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
3. Children No More: Were and Are Gone
4. The Devil Is Busy
5. Perfectly a Strangeness
Best Live Action Short
1. Two People Exchanging Saliva
2. Butcher’s Stain
3. The Singers
4. A Friend of Dorothy
5. Jane Austen’s Period Drama
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Kokuho
4. The Smashing Machine
5. The Ugly Stepsister
Original Score
Sinners, Ludwig Goransso
One Battle after Another, Jonny Greenwood
Bugonia. Jerskin Fendrix
Frankenstein. Alexandre Desplat
Hamnet. Max Richter
Best Original Song
1. I Lied To You from Sinners
2. Golden from KPop Demon Hunters
3. Train Dreams from Train Dreams
4. Dear Me from Diane Warren: Relentless
5. Sweet Dreams Of Joy from Viva Verdi!
Best Production Design
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. One Battle after Another
Original Sound
1. F1
2. Sinners
3. Sirāt
4. One Battle after Another
5. Frankenstein
Best Visual Effects
1. Avatar: Fire and Ash
2. Sinners
3. F1
4. Jurassic World Rebirth
5. The Lost Bus
